1. Field
Embodiments of the inventive concepts relate to semiconductor devices. More specifically, embodiments of the inventive concepts relate to semiconductor devices that include conductive pads having a portion that are thicker than corresponding gate electrodes, and to methods of fabricating such semiconductor devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Efforts are underway to further increase the integration density of semiconductor devices to improve their performance and/or to decrease the cost of manufacturing these devices. The integration density of a conventional two-dimensional memory device is determined by the area occupied by the unit memory cells of the device, and accordingly, may be influenced by the ability of the fabrication equipment to form fine micropatterns. Unfortunately, the apparatuses necessary to form very fine micropatterns may be expensive, which may limit the ability to highly integrate two-dimensional semiconductor memory devices. Semiconductor devices having three-dimensionally arranged memory cells have been proposed to overcome this limitation.